Would you like to make a difference to immigration detainees at Campsfield House?

Asylum Welcome is seeking a service co-ordinator to manage volunteers who visit detainees at Campsfield House and who provide advice and casework. The service aims to promote the safety of detainees, reduce isolation, enable them to understand and exercise their rights and make their voices heard.

You will possess empathy, sound judgement and experience of working in or managing a high-quality, volunteer-run service. You will understand the U.K. immigration system and how detention is used within it and be able to develop professional relationships that enable you to achieve positive outcomes.

Asylum Welcome encourages former detainees who are ‘experts by experience’ to consider applying for this position.

Hours: 15 hours a week over 3 days a week, with possibility of extended hours

Asylum Welcome is seeking an experienced manager to co-ordinate and support our large community of 180 volunteers, celebrate their successes and replenish the pool with new recruits.

Based at our Welcome Centre in East Oxford, you will have a key role in Asylum Welcome’s small team of expert staff. You will supply our service managers with volunteers so they can sustain our busy, welcoming, high-quality services for asylum seekers, refugees and detainees.

With excellent people skills, you will need an organised approach, empathy and sound judgement.

Hours: 21 hours a week (3 days)

Salary: £16,500 p.a. (pro rata £27,500 FTE)

Closing date: midnight on Sunday 26th November 2017.

Please download the following for further information:

Asylum Welcome is delighted to announce that the Right Reverend Dr. Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford, is to become the charity's patron. Bishop Steven has a deep interest in the welfare of refugees and is keen to support efforts to enable them to rebuild their lives. Asylum Welcome achieves that through a large network of compassionate and expert volunteers and through the support of people in all parts of community.

In 2015, following evidence and criticisms from a range of organisations and individuals including under-cover film from detention centres, the Home Secretary commissioned Stephen Shaw (former Prisons Ombudsman) to carry out a review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons. The Shaw Report was published in January 2016. Testimony from Asylum Welcome is cited the report. The report concludes:

“I my view, a smaller, more focused, strategically planned immigration detention estate, subject to the many reforms I have outlined in this report, would both be more protective of the welfare of vulnerable people and deliver better value for the taxpayer. Immigration detention has increased, is increasing, and – whether by better screening, more effective reviews, or formal time limit – it ought to be reduced."

Asylum Welcome’s annual fundraising appeal has a special urgency this year. Asylum Welcome is playing a vital part in the local response to the growing international refugee crisis. Our services are getting busier, with more new arrivals and more complex needs. We are also advising the local authorities on preparations to accept resettled Syrians. All of this is only possible through the dedicated support of over 120 volunteers, who also continue to run advice sessions, provide English lessons, food parcels, detention visits, a youth club and more.

Asylum Welcome relies heavily on local donations and is asking local people to support its appeal this winter.

At this time of year, as the nights grow colder and darker, refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom are desperately poor and hungry, sometimes destitute and homeless, need the help Asylum Welcome provides more than ever.

The Immigration Bill will be debated in parliament on 13th October. If implemented, it will have far-reaching impact on asylum seekers, refugees and detainees, and on local communities and local authorities.

In particular we are concerned about:

Changes to the right of appeal

Changes to asylum support, especially those changes affecting detainees and those affecting families with children

Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett visits Asylum Welcome on Friday to pay tribute to the charity’s efforts to support people who have survived war, terrorism, and human rights violations and who now face detention and destitution in Oxford.

Director Kate Smart described new Home Office proposals remove asylum support payments and accommodation from families with young children as “a complete absence of basic, decent humanitarian values”.

The charity will be writing to the Home Office to express concerns about the proposals, which, it argues, will inevitably lead to children joining the numbers of those who are destitute.

It is also planning to step up its practical assistance. In addition to food parcels, the charity will begin providing breakfasts, targeted at those who are sleeping rough. Asylum Welcome runs with 120 local volunteers.

“We don’t have the resources to provide beds for people” said Kate Smart “but food, friendship, advice and a welcoming place during the day, is what we are good at.”